TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT
08/31/10 07:08 pm ET
A Navy buddy of mine working on the Pakistan relief operation mused in an e-mail on Monday that for some odd reason Paris Hilton and her arrest for alleged cocaine possession received more media play over the past weekend than the fact that "we rescued thousands of people.">>
08/30/10 06:13 pm ET
Navy Chief Information Officer Rob Carey approved an electronic signature policy for the Navy and Marine Corps on Aug. 27 in a move designed to save paper, improve security and save money.>>
08/27/10 05:14 pm ET
As anyone who has served in combat knows, if a buddy is wounded, the first two things you need to do are make sure he can breathe and his bleeding is stopped. >>
08/26/10 04:47 pm ET
The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency tweaked on Wednesday its original announcement from last week to award a sole-source contract to Google for geospatial visualization services so outfits such as Microsoft can apply.>>
08/25/10 03:31 pm ET
The Veteran Affairs Department's paperless claims processing system ended up on the list of troubled IT projects that are up for review and possible termination. I wonder if federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra has a back up plan if he delays or cancels the paperless project.>>
08/24/10 05:36 pm ET
I reported on Aug. 20 that the folks over at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency determined only Google had the smarts to handle visualization of the planet.>>
08/23/10 04:57 pm ET
Here's a loopy procurement that Defense Secretary Robert Gates should cancel immediately if he's serious about saving money: The General Officer Transition Course hatched last week by the Army Contracting Center of Excellence.>>
08/20/10 03:44 pm ET
Or, based on this sole-source contract announcement from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Google now owns, at the least, visualization of the planet.>>
08/19/10 04:19 pm ET
I reported on Monday the Military Health System decided to consider commercial software for its loathed AHLTA electronic health record system. The folks over at MHS told me the planning process started in December 2009, with establishment of an EHR Way Ahead Planning Office this February. >>
08/18/10 02:26 pm ET
Lt. Gen. William Lord, the Air Force chief information officer, said cyberattackers have shifted their tactics from trying to breach firewalls to penetrating applications and said the service has serious application vulnerabilities.>>
08/17/10 05:21 pm ET
Last week the Military Health System detailed plans to replace its AHLTA electronic health record system -- loathed by its clinicians -- with a new system based on commercial products.>>
08/16/10 12:35 pm ET
The Military Health System may have finally decided to get rid of its electronic health record system called AHLTA, which military clinicians loath and what S. Ward Casscells, who served as the Defense Department top doc from 2007-2009, described as being "hard to learn and use, slow and often down". Officials are looking to replace the system with some (hopefully) easier to use commercial software.>>
08/13/10 02:12 pm ET
That's the take of Jean-Pierre Blackburn, minister of Canada's Veterans Affairs Department, who said last week since Canada's large population of World War II and Korean War vets die at the rate of 1,700 a month, it's time to shrink the size of his department.>>
08/12/10 04:59 pm ET
I think tracking lost Veterans Affairs Department BlackBerry gadgets may become a regular feature here, with reports on Wednesday and in June -- and, here now, Thursday's roundup of the number of the gizmos lost so far this year by VA employees.>>
08/11/10 05:49 pm ET
Today the Veterans Affairs Department started posting online its monthly data breach reports as part of its ongoing transparency thing, VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker told a press briefing this morning. He said the latest report (for July) might not make it to the Web until Thursday.>>
08/10/10 05:34 pm ET
A variety of speech transcripts and slides released by the Pentagon on Monday called for combining the Defense Department chief information officer ship with the Defense Information Systems Agency, but various crystal ball folks I've talked to are still trying to figure out the end game.>>
08/09/10 05:54 pm ET
Defense Secretary Robert Gates made official the elimination of the office of the Assistant Secretary for Networks and Information Integration - also known as the office of the chief information officer. At a Pentagon press briefing today he detailed cuts in the Pentagon budget to save $100 billion over the next five years.>>
08/06/10 05:04 pm ET
It's a rule of thumb that insiders pose the greatest threat to classified information systems -- a rule sadly reinforced by the public release of 91,000 classified, purloined Defense Department documents by Wikileaks.>>
08/05/10 03:59 pm ET
This is one of those, "Where's the Beef?" bits . . . >>
08/04/10 05:48 pm ET
My colleague Megan Scully from CongressDaily reporter on Wednesday that Navy Undersecretary Robert Work has kicked off a study on the post-Afghanistan future of the Marine Corps, with an emphasis on a return to the traditional "from the sea" mission.>>
08/03/10 05:10 pm ET
The "removal" of Teresa "Teri" Takai, California's chief information officer, from her planned nomination hearing on Monday to become the assistant secretary of Defense for networks and information integration and Defense CIO was no accident.>>
08/02/10 04:27 pm ET
The Senate Armed Services Committee was supposed to hold a hearing on Tuesday on the nomination of Teresa "Teri" Takai, the chief information officer from California, as the assistant secretary of Defense for networks and information integration - a.k.a. the Defense CIO. But the committee inexplicably delayed it.>>
